A Phone Call From Paul: Claudia Rankine

A few months ago, Paul Holdengraber managed to track down Claudia Rankine in the far northern reaches of Ithaca, NY, where she was attending some kind of summer camp for artists and writers. In part one of their phone conversation, Paul accuses Claudia of “maybe being a bit of a strange stalker…”

Claudia Rankine on accidental stalking…

“I was in London a few weeks ago, and I was walking around the new Tate. And there was a woman with a contraption that I thought was a cane. I was in the Agnes Martin show. And so I was fascinated by this thing she was holding. You know when you see something sort of half way, you’re actually looking one way but your peripheral vision is also taking in something? And so I saw her holding this thing, and I just assumed it was a cane and that she was disabled in some way. But then when I turned to look at her, she was wearing three inch high heels. I thought, “That’s strange.” The thing turned out to be a chair that she flipped open and sat down in front of the painting, and looked at the painting for a while, and then she moved on to the next one. And I recorded her movement on my iPhone. So I had a series of six shots—I was going to follow her around the museum, but then I thought she would think I was some kind of strange stalker—and so I had to satisfy myself with these six shots…”

Claudia Rankine on objectifying the moment…

“I think what an artist does in general is objectify moments. [Sophie Calle] takes ordinary moments in the day and turns them into art moments or art objects. And so in that way, working out of he the kind of day-to-day, so that wandering around becomes kind of a source material, and the investigation of some accidental moment—like seeing this woman—can be taken up and pursued relentlessly. I mean, if I really was inspired by her, I think I would have kept following that woman.

Claudia Rankine on investigating a subject…

“I think that I am plagued by the inability to let things go sometimes. The interrogation of a subject can take me years, in terms of thinking about it and turning it over and looking at it and revisiting. It’s a strange quality that I have, that I can stay with something for such a long time. For instance, if I like a song, I’ll just listen put it on loop and I’ll listen to it for months. And I only need to listen to that one song.”

Claudia Rankine on rereading…

“I feel that way about authors and certain books. Certain books I can read and re-read them, and they give me the same amount of pleasure every time. And then I find things I didn’t find before, and I sit in moments. The pleasure of re-reading is that if you want to stop somewhere and stay in that paragraph or that sentence, you’re not driven by the desire to find out what’s happening next… you can just sit inside of anything that holds you, you can just sit there and find a paragraph and look out the window and walk around and think about it.”

NEXT WEEK: CLAUDIA RANKINE, PART TWO

Paul talks to Claudia about Obama’s Charleston eulogy, hope in America, and getting profiled in an airport security line.